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RD3

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Posts posted by RD3

  1. On 6/27/2018 at 12:36 PM, Nice Guy Eddie said:

    A friend of mine mentioned how his family AT&T bill is >$600/month.  Practically fell out of my chair.  Family of 3.  All of their phones, smart watches, tablets have data plans plus the internet/cable and a handful of on-demand movies each weekend.   I almost felt like staging an intervention with them.   Being entertained/connected 100% of the time with 100% of the options is overkill.      I get that families pay more than me as being single but it shouldn't approach a car payment.

    I'm down to $50 for internet, $11 for Hulu plus HBO, and some portion of my Amazon Prime is for their video.    Since I help my dad with his Uverse account, I do admit that I've used his account from time to time to catch a show I could see otherwise.  However I feel that is justifiable since its in my name.  As for my phone, I'm lucky in that my employer picks up the tab.

     
    We switched to AT&T for cell service from Sprint last year.  At the time saved $35 but we also got 2 iPhones 8 out of it (Sprint wasn't offering any deals).
     
    We switched to Directv Now over Memorial Day weekend and saved $100 on that.  Comparing my bills from a year ago I'm saving $135 a month and we have 2 iPhone 8s out of the deal.
     
    June 2018
    - $170 AT&T (cell, 2 iPhones including 1 iPhone 8 with installments + 1 free iPhone 8)
    - $74 AT&T (internet)
    - $38 Directv Now with free HBO (tv)
    TOTAL = $282
     
    May 2018
    - $195 AT&T (cell, 2 iPhones including 1 iPhone 8 with installments + 1 free iPhone 8)
    - $186 AT&T (internet + tv)
    TOTAL = $381
     
    May 2017
    - $200 Sprint (cell, 2 iPhones no free phones)
    - $216 AT&T (internet + tv)
    TOTAL = $416
  2. On 4/7/2018 at 2:49 AM, Tex Pete said:

    Personally, I was pissed off about the whole thing so I dragged my feet renewing and i accidentally missed the deadline. When I realized it and called in, they passed me to a rep for new season ticket sales, despite the fact that I had been a season ticket holder for 15 years, AND that no one had purchased my seats. I told them to fuck off, that those seats weren't worth what I had been paying, much less what they wanted me to pay with the donation added on. 

    I underlined the most important part. You didn't reup and they can't sell your seats at the same price you were paying. Which tells me these guys are clueless on how to make being a season ticket holder "stickier"; even Schlitterbahn reduces the cost of season tickets if you renew.

    And the Athletic Dept  has no idea how to price them. 

    • Like 1
  3. Problems:  games are too long, DKR-TMS has way too many seats (and I hope CDC's new "rescrubbed" plan includes not adding any seats, removing the SEZ bleachers and putting in suites in its place), kickoff times need to be locked down sooner to allow fans to plan for other social activities/travel.

    Easy solutions/low hanging fruit:

    1. End stopping the clock after 1st downs and incomplete passes unless in the last 2 min of each half.
    2. Reduce halftime duration.  CFB halftime were longer than the pros because back in the day both bands played.  When was the last time we saw the other teams band??? Maybe 1 game a year? Texas/OU let the "home" team band play at half.

    People think that the tv networks want longer games; they don't!!!  It screws up their schedule. They want a good product that lasts the duration they put on the guide.  CBS hates it when the late Sunday game goes long and impacts the start of 60 Minutes.  In fact, 60 Minutes is one reason CBS sold out the rights to March Madness to TNT/TBS/TRU (one reason not the only).  Now CBS does the early Sunday games during March Madness and it frees them up for no conflict with 60 Minutes.

    • Like 2
  4. On 7/14/2018 at 10:27 PM, Michael Knight said:

    Greed ruined college football and strangled everything we loved about it. It had always been a regional sport focused on rivalries. The obsession with one true national champion has made the golden goose a fat disgusting blob vomiting it's detritus onto the viewing public. With the breakup of traditional rivalries there is 0 reason to watch a game if it has no national implications.

    The ADs took a money grab and now they are at the behest of the tv companies who honestly don't care if the games sell out. 

    As John U. Bacon wrote, fans aren't leaving college football; college football is leaving the fans.

    • Like 1
  5. I have maxed out my 401k since I started working 15+ years ago. My company has had some match but at this point I don't even remember what it is.  I basically take as much tax deferral as I can.  Max out dependent day care, health care savings account...  Bottom line:  decrease your taxable income as much as possible and find a way to live off the rest of your paycheck and keep saving more on top of that.

    • Like 1
  6. On 4/6/2018 at 9:51 PM, Beau Vine said:

    This will be pretty much preaching to the choir here based on what I've read over the past few years.

    theathletic.com

     

    Who wrote this? Good column and something I have been following for years.

    I highly recommend John U. Bacon's book on the college football experience.  "4th & Long: The fight for the heart and soul of college football".

    http://amzn.to/4thLong

  7. On 7/3/2018 at 11:55 PM, RD3 said:

    But.... I'm surprised SWA hasn't tried to create a more expensive version to sort of compete with the AMEX.  $250 but you get free wifi, A-list, and more drink tickets?  That's marginal costs to them and they can create stickier credit card customers.  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

    Just as I was saying... Southwest is rolling out a newer higher end credit card.  $150 instead of $99 but you get more benefits just like I was pitching.

    https://www.marketwatch.com/story/chase-and-southwest-have-a-new-travel-credit-card-but-is-it-a-good-deal-2018-07-19

    Gives you some upgrading boarding, discount on drinks and wifi,...

    Quote

    Chase developed the card after Southwest cardholders told the bank they wanted faster boarding and in-flight benefits, Leslie Gillin, Chase’s co-brand cards president, said in a statement.

    To that end, the card comes with several perks:

    • A $75 annual Southwest travel credit

    • 20% back on inflight purchases including drinks, Wi-Fi, messages and movies

    • Up to four upgraded boardings per year

     

  8. 2 hours ago, SizzleChest said:

    I disagree.  S2 was great, no contention there.  But Livia's death and that horrible digital concoction notwithstanding, the eps in season 3 laid substantial groundwork for successive seasons.  From the FBI wire plant to Tony's new GF (Annabella Sciorra was fantastic) to the inner crime family combat (culminating in Pine Barrens and Jackie Jr. getting wacked), so much happened in this season.  And I think whoever said the sho was supposed to be 4 seasons was right - at the time S3 was written to set up the close of the series for a final season.  Then the show got insanely popular, 9/11 happened (which add new dimensions to write about), and Chase had to pretty extensively extend the series arc.

    Don't get me wrong; the show was still great but I think it lost a big element when Livia died in real life...

    Apparently S3 was going to have her testifying against Tony in court.

  9. Sopranos seasons 1 & 2 are some of the best tv ever.

    But the series took a step back in season 3 when his mom on the show died.  The biggest thing that separates Sopranos from any other mob show/movie was the conflict between Tony and his mom. Corleone's mom in The Godfather; did she even speak english? She cooked and hugged them.  Tony's mom tried to have him killed and his uncle Junior was a part of it.  That family conflict is what drove him to need a shrink.

    Ironically, the public caught on to the Sopranos after season 2; the show got more famous after it peaked.

    And in real life she died before season 3 aired.  But when that conflict died, it wasn't the same.  It was still great tv and I wish we had tv like that.  But seasons 1 & 2 were the best.

    p.s.  In real life, Tony's mom is based on David Chase's mom who was a sociopath.

    Quote

    David Chase, the creator of The Sopranos, based Livia heavily on his own mother, Norma Chase. He described her as being paranoid, sharp-tongued, abusive, and disregarding her son's career achievements. Many of Livia's memorable lines, such as "Poor you" or "daughters are better at taking care of their mothers than sons," are what Norma Chase would say.

    https://www.quora.com/Was-the-portrayal-of-Olivia-Soprano-Tonys-mother-that-of-a-malignant-narcissist-a-borderline-or-a-psychopathic-personality

  10. 16 hours ago, JimmyGlass said:

    I agree with a lot of what you say, but I'm not as confident as you are that Intel could be successful in the near term ( ~5-10 years) going to a foundry model. 

    ...

    Intel is fucking great at designing CPUs based on x86.  They are great a manufacturing very very expensive chips in a slow and steady way.  That has very little to do with running a foundry.

    Let me take a step back -> this won't be a slam dunk.  It would take a huge step.  And that's what those guys are paid the big bucks to consider...

  11. On 7/9/2018 at 10:52 AM, UnivTex34 said:

    So I have yet to get the notice from DTV Now that my prices are changing. Now I am using the AT&T Wireless unlimited discount, so maybe that affects it? Anyone know?

    I have the $15 discount via AT&T Wireless unlimited choice enhanced (they need a longer name!).  When I 1st signed up, they didn't give me the discount and later refunded me $15.  I have the "Just Right" $50 plan and they charged me last week $37 with that discount...

    And HBO Go free via Directv login (even though I have Directv Now).

    Only knock is Cartoon Network app off Roku won't let me sign in as Directv Now. I still get the channel on live tv but my kids can't watch the locked programs on Carton Network for the time being. Maybe Carton Network adds DTV Now sooner than later though....

  12. 23 hours ago, crash_davis said:

    this brings up a interesting thought/question.  has any company or ceo been able to reinvent themselves to avoid being disrupted?  with the markets incredibly myopic focus of quarterly earnings, i don't think many ceo's have the leeway required to divert large sums of capital on things which may kill current revenue and margin.

    Disruption (as Prof. Christensen defines) is when a company continues to go after higher margins leaving lower margin segments to other competitors until the lower competitors scale up with different (disruptional) technology to compete at lower costs and unseat the original company. And the danger is the original company (in the short term) is incentivized to continue on this high margin path.

    IBM is another example when they introduced the PC.  The original IBM PCs threatened their own higher margin businesses... and IBM eventually made a ton of money off that forward looking move.  Of course they opened up Pandora's box and the rest is history.

  13. 23 hours ago, crash_davis said:

    this brings up a interesting thought/question.  has any company or ceo been able to reinvent themselves to avoid being disrupted?  with the markets incredibly myopic focus of quarterly earnings, i don't think many ceo's have the leeway required to divert large sums of capital on things which may kill current revenue and margin.

    The classic example is actually Intel. They started off as memory company and was the worldwide leader in DRAM.  Then the Japanese leap frogged them and they were faced with the dilemma.  What to do?  Chase DRAM or put their chips all in on their smaller micropocessor group?  Andy Grove was a genius and said what would our successors executive team do?  Gordon Moore (or Moore's Law) said microprocessors...  Then why wait?  And the rest is history.

    http://watercoolernewsletter.com/the-revolving-door-test-how-intel-overcame-fear-by-gaining-an-outsiders-perspective/

    Quote

    In his memoir, Only the Paranoid Survive, Andy Grove recalled a tough dilemma he faced in 1985 as the president of Intel: whether to kill the company’s line of memory chips. Intel’s business had been founded on memories, and indeed for a time the company was the world’s only source of memory. But by the end of the 1970s, a dozen or so competitors had emerged. Meanwhile, a small team at Intel had developed another product, the microprocessor, and in 1981 that team got a big break when IBM chose Intel’s microprocessor to be the brain of its new personal computer.

     

  14. I'm a huge fan of Ben Thompson but he's a bit off here.  Why?  Intel has a viable path -> they have so spin off the fabs. Even in a day of mobile and less desktop computers, there is a need for more foundries.  TSMC is the gorilla and they charge a pretty penny. Intel is a bit behind TSMC but these guys can leapfrog each other and continue to fill their fabs.  Running fabs isn't cheap but we are in a world with more electronics, not less.

    The team that can get disrupted is Intel design.  Intel's reliance on x86 is similar to Microsoft's reliance on Windows. But without going to a fully fab-less design company, I don't see Intel changing.

    For the record, their datacenter/server business is KILLING IT.  And that can continue if they went fab-less. 

  15. 1 hour ago, Nice Guy Eddie said:

    sad that so many have moved to a point where we don't answer unknown numbers.  You actually should want to talk to unknown people, who are legitimately calling you.   Ask any parent if they want to ignore an unknown number.  Could be a teacher or even a stranger who is helping their kid.   For me if my dogs get loose, someone may call me by seeing my phone number on my dogs' collars.  I don't answer and they choose to not leave a message.  I missed out on getting them back quickly.  

    100% agreed with you. With kids in school, you never know if the call is from a teacher or the school nurse.  So I field these unknown calls and it can be frustrating b/c 95% of them are spam.  Of course that 5% has been the school nurse and fielding that call makes the 95% worth it.

    BUT this app has worked so far.  I have had 2 so far and it is showed as "Suspected Spam".  I filtered that out.

  16. When AMD launched their 1st CPU outside traditional AMD/GF fabs (Ontario TSMC 40nm), I said that there could be a day in which AMD had products at Intel fabs. This was around 2011?  My point was that Intel needed to spinoff their fabs to a new company.

    They still should.  The weakening PC market means that Intel cannot fill up their fab.  And they have dipped their toe into the foundry model (they have a side business) but for them to succeed at it, they need to go all-in.  The design side would benefit because they could have the flexibility to use TSMC 7nm; the foundry side would benefit because TSMC has no real competition (GF and Samsung, ehh).

    I promise you; the last thing TSMC wants is to have Intel as a competitor on the foundry side.

  17. Long term, twitter has to dump the fake accounts.  If it means speed bumps in "active users" so be it.  Twitter's downfall will be stuff like bots.  Go get 'em. 

    As a user of twitter but stock holder of Square, I don't care if twitter goes under; I hope Jack Dorsey gets back to Square full time...

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